While the big news during the Microsoft event was mostly related to Windows 10, there were some other interesting announcements made for the gamers. In Windows related news, Microsoft has nebulously announced that Windows 10 will be coming in some capacity to the Xbox One. While it’s not clear whether or not this means people will be typing up their school papers for achievements in MS Word, it’s a given that low-level system compatibility and functionality is part of this plan.
The first hint of this integration is the announcement that Microsoft is taking a page from Sony and remote play with their own game streaming function. They’re doing it in a big, big way by allowing for Xbox One games to be remotely streamed to any Windows device on a home network, so yes, this means you’ll eventually be able to play the Halo MCC on your laptop, desktop or even Surface tablet at some point in the future. In conjunction with this, some games going forward are also going to have cross-play functionality, with Fables Legends being used as an example of co-op play with one person on the Xbox One, while another plays on the PC.
Finally, and perhaps most interesting of all is the announcement of “HoloLens,” which is essentially an augmented reality headset. While the unit is still in the prototype stage, it’s a bold and different direction from the virtual reality goals of Sony and Facebook. We still need to see whether the actual unit will perform as well the promotional video makes it out, but then Kinect also seemed like an amazing technology until people actually tried it. Nevertheless, Microsoft had a lot of interesting announcements, and there’s real potential in the idea of augmented reality, even if HoloLens ends up not being that first step.
